Brainwave Coherence - Intro, Free meditation technique, Evolution

Goldi and Ramón y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for their extensive observations, descriptions and categorizations of neurons throughout the brain. The neuron doctrine was supported by experiments following Luigi Galvani’s pioneering work in the electrical excitability of muscles and neurons.

The big breakthrough came with the invention of the EEG machine. Introduced by psychologist and psychiatrist, Hans Berger, of the University of Jena in Germany, the EEG machine offered the opportunity to measure electrical activity in living brains in real time. It was Hans Berger, in 1924, who carried out the first EEG readings on a human subject. The results of this lead him to suggest that brain currents changed according to the functional status of the brain. It is hardly news to us that electrical activity in the brain in sleep, activity, anesthesia and when we are having a quick epileptic fit changes but, at the time, it was a revelation. It was not, however, a revelation that science accepted. Although these revolutionary ideas would help to create a new branch of medical science called neurophysiology, it was more than ten years before Berger’s conclusions were validated and became integrated in the scientific core paradigm. In the ensuing years many EEG research projects were carried out and our knowledge of brain functioning increased rapidly.

Through the electrical fields mapped using EEG, science came to understand that neural activity fell into a number of frequencies. The initial classification of brainwaves into four frequency classes (alpha, beta, theta and delta) brought the wider aspects of brainwave functioning -- notably including brainwave coherence -- into focus.

As EEG machines became more sensitive and the techniques applied became more sophisticated, many areas of the brain were mapped. These, however, dealt with day-to-day thinking processes; science still had little knowledge of or interest in higher states of consciousness. Throughout the 40, 50s and early 60s there was some research into telepathy and brain activity during ‘paranormal’ events but that was as far as it went.

It was not until those watershed years in the late sixties that things changed. Between the years 1966 and 1969, the western world went through a quiet revolution that brought colour and style to the drab monotoned post-war social fabric. As kids throughout the USA and Europe ‘turned on and tuned in,’ they discovered the field of infinite varieties that exists within the mind. Through the medium of lysergic acid diethylamide they experienced the explosion of consciousness that blew open the doors of their spirituality and gave them a vision of the truely expansive -- not to say, infinite -- nature of consciousness. For many the mind became an adventure playground in which anything was possible. Eventually, however, the party had to end and we all straightened up (some more so than others) and got jobs or went back to school. But many of those who had experienced expanded consciousness through LSD and cannabis were intrigued and wanted to know more.

Consciousness in all its forms was out of closet and right on the table. As aspects of Eastern culture were introduced into the West, science could do little else but respond to the mood of the times and take a look at what higher states of consciousness were all about. And -- surprise, surprise -- it was the TM Movement that was among the first to probe the meditational mind.

In the late 1960s, Dr Keith Wallace and Dr Herbert Benson carried out extensive tests on those practising TM. Although only some of the research involved EEG readings, the results were impressive. Amongst other things they created the basis upon which virtually the entire mind/body medicine ethos is based. Although Wallace and Benson severed their connection, they both went on to greater things. Keith Wallace remains a leading light of the TM Movement while Dr Benson disavowed his association with TM and created his own technique -- known as the Relaxation Response -- involving similar processes but without the Indian trappings which is very widely used today. Today Dr Benson is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Mind/Body Institute.

Increasingly sophisticated EEG research continued for the next few years but it was not until the appearance of the MRI -- magnetic resonance imaging -- in the mid-1970s that neuroscience came into its own.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is an extremely complicated process that I will not even attempt to explain. Suffice it to say that it is a process of such sensitivity that it can actually image the nuclei of cellular atoms inside the brain and body. MRI provides good contrast between the different soft tissues of the body, which make it especially useful in imaging the brain, muscles, the heart and cancers compared with other medical imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) or X-rays. In neurological terms, EEG, of course, is not an imaging technique as such, despite the fact that it does produce images. The images, however, are not of cells but are of electrical activity within those cells.

MRI was developed in 1973 at the University of Aberdeen and the first studies performed on humans were published in 1977. Since those days, however, MRI has come a long way.

THE NEUROLOGY OF
HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS

Over the years leading up to the appearance of magnetic resonance imaging, the science of neurology had come into its own. Applying increasingly sophisticated EEG techniques, science had identified so many functional aspects of the brain and thinking processes that it seemed to know just about everything. Every main area of the brain had been identified and its main functions catalogued. The different types of brainwave had been identified and many neural circuits had been mapped.

It took a while for neuroscientists to follow the somewhat specialised lead provided by Benson and Wallace but eventually they did. Suddenly meditation and higher states of consciousness were on the menu.

In 2001, Daniel Goleman & Tara Bennett-Goleman put forward the suggestion that meditation works because of the relationship between the amygdala, which controls the fear response, and the aspect of the prefrontal cortex known as the inhibitory centre. That, however, was the thin edge of the wedge as the revelations came thick and fast.

Using new scanning techniques, in 2003 Professor Owen Flanagan of Duke University in North Carolina, with the assistance of scientists at the University of Wisconsin, was able to announce that certain areas of the brains of monks light up constantly. The scanning studies showed dramatic activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Tibetan meditators. The left prefrontal lobe is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.

Around the same time Paul Ekman, of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, suggested that meditation and mindfulness can pacify the amygdala. Ekman discovered that experienced monks were less likely than other people to be shocked, flustered, surprised or get angry. In a report in the New Scientist magazine, Professor Flanagan suggested that there is something about the conscientious practice of a meditation technique that “results in the kind of happiness we all seek,”

The revelations continued. In the ensuing years, researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of the brain. Speaking about the study, Sara Lazar, research team leader and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, said: “Our data suggests that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being.” The study was particularly interesting because it focused not on monks but on long-term meditators engaged in day-to-day activities. Some time later, this research finding was confirmed when a group of researchers at UCLA found that meditators (this time monks) possessed an enlarged hippocampus and expanded areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus — all regions known for regulating emotions. “We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior,” said Eileen Luders, lead author of the research report and a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging. “The observed differences in brain anatomy might give us a clue why meditators have these exceptional abilities.”

Among the definitive studies of the neurology of meditation amongst Tibetan Monks were a number carried out by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the Wisconsin University’s W. M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior. Using a combination of EEG and MRI scans, Davidson identified the left pre-frontal cortex as the area of the brain in which neurological activity in long-term meditators is particularly intense. “We found . . . . brain activation on a scale we have never seen before,” The study showed much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks and found that the movement of the waves through the brain were far more coherent” than in the non-meditating control group. The intense gamma waves found in the monks, it was suggested, perform the function of co-ordinating disparate brain circuits. This function is strongly associated with heightened awareness and higher levels of consciousness.

In the light of these and many other similar findings, a new word entered the medical lexicon -- neuroplasticity. Describing the hitherto unforeseen ability of the brain to change not only its functional processes but even its physical form, neuroplasticity opened up whole new areas of neurological research.
Enter Dr Andrew Newberg, the creator of Neurotheology.